Wristbands for use in admitting and identifying patients for both in patient and out patient care are routinely used in the medical community today. The assignee hereof owns a number of patents disclosing and claiming various inventive wristbands suited to this medical field application, and which have experienced great commercial success. Examples of these include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,933,993; 6,000,160; 6,067,739; 6,438,881; 6,510,634; 6,748,687; 7,047,682; 7,017,293; and 7,017,294, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. These patented wristbands have been made and sold by the millions. Some are sized for use on adults and others are sized for use on infants and even newborns having the smallest of wrists. In fact, typically the wristbands are attached around a baby's ankles, so as used herein the term “wrist” should be understood to include any person's limb and “wristband” should be understood to include a band intended to be placed around any person's limb. The wristband designs shown in the “7” million numbered patents include a shorter length face ply imaging area die cut into a face stock ply and a laminating ply having a clamshell for enclosing the imaging area along with an integrally formed strap and cinch slot attachment arrangement for securing the wristband about a wearer's wrist. The embodiments shown in these patents are for multi-ply construction, with a face ply preferably made from paper stock and a laminating ply adhered thereto generally in full or partial sheet size and with the wristband elements die cut therein. While this construction has been very successful, and millions of wristbands of this construction have been sold and are continuing to be sold, the assignee continually endeavors to improve on its designs and develop alternate constructions, especially when cost savings can be achieved.
As an alternative construction to that shown in the assignee's prior patents, the inventor herein has succeeded in designing and developing a simplified construction of a composite laminate web into which a plurality of self laminating wristband carriers is die cut from relatively thin laminate, with layers of adhesive protected with releasable liners so that individual carriers may be separated from the composite web and used to self laminate separately formed labels therein. As continuous webs of thin laminate material are welded together in a continuous process, with adhesive and liners also being applied in a continuous process, the costs are anticipated to be greatly reduced over the multi-ply construction previously disclosed and commercialized. Furthermore, providing the carriers separately adapts them for use with labels which themselves can be separately formed in continuous rolls, or having other desired construction features. This allows a user to separately choose and utilize labels of different design, with perhaps having different color, information, medical condition flags, or other features built into or added to the labels.
While it is known in the prior art to form self laminating wristbands in continuous composite web format, the prior art wristband design known to the inventor to have been so made incorporates a snap closure at an end of the wristband requiring an increased length as well as a series of holes to be punched in the strap to provide an adjustable length. This prior art construction did not include the cinch slot and strap attachment design of the present invention. Use of the snap closure device further required two plastic inserts (male and female) to be assembled to each carrier in the web, while the inventors cinch slot and strap attachment design eliminates these assembly steps. Furthermore, the cinch slot and strap attachment provides infinite adjustability instead of the fixed lengths provided by the fixed strap hole positions. Also, perhaps because of all the holes punched in the strap, the vinyl material used to make this prior art design was of heavier construction than that of the present invention. For example, the thickness of the prior art composite web is 12 mil while that of the present invention is merely a nominal 2 mil. This construction further improves the comfort for a wearer of the wristband due in part to the wristband being lighter and more flexible as well.
While some of the advantages and features of the present invention have been explained above, a fuller understanding may be attained by referring to the drawings and description of the preferred embodiment below.